Topic: How do you make your computer faster?

[Requiem]

Without buying anything that is.

My computer is showing its age, and I would like to know if there are any small adjustments I could do to speed it up...

I don't know if it would help if you knew my specs but here they are:

Windows XP SP2
P4 2.0
512 ram
GeForce2 MX/MX 400

[Kairon]

Back up everything, reformat, then reinstall everything?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Requiem]

I could do that, but I don't have an external drive.

[Kairon]

Maybe CD-Rs? But that's just a hassle.

Maybe you could borrow a friends computer to back it up onto?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[BiLdItUp1]

These are the basics, I suppose. Sorry if you already knew them:
-Add another stick of RAM; get it up to a gig. You should be able to do this for ~$40 or less.
-Defrag if you don't usually. Don't use the built-in Windows defragger, as it supposedly doesn't do anything. Instead, invest in (or 'acquire') Diskeeper or something similar.
As for backing up...borrow an iPod, unless that won't hold everything. I personally keep all my media and documents on a separate HDD.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

1.33 GHz Athlong T-bird
256 MB PC133 RAM
16 MB Matrox Marvel
Win 98SE

You wanna talk about age?  This is the same system I do my video work on, including the recent SSBB trailer.  Granted, I have little care for PC gaming.

[Requiem]

I don't really game. I just have a sh!tload of music and it seems to be making my computer lag.

And oh ya

55.8 GB drive (sopposedly 60)

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Partition your drive, or get a separate physical harddrive for general storage of movies/music/media.  Keep your main (OS/apps) drive neat and defragged.

Reduce the amount of "crap" that loads upon startup.  Minimize the amount of apps you leave running.  Treat your system tray like a pants pocket, not a suitcase.

[oohhboy]

Soldering Irons.

Don't have a PC. Gotta Mac. iMac rev D. Slot loader. L2 cache set to 2:1. Cpu soldered for 450 Mhz instead of 400. Great for net use. Got a GC for games.

[KDR_11k]

55.8 GB drive (sopposedly 60)

Unit difference. HD manufacturers use 10^3 while OSes use 2^10 for calculating the kilo/mega/giga/tera stuff.

Want my advise? Take out that graphics card, crush it under your heel and get a decent one. Even the lowest end ones will net you a significant boost. Or you could overclock your CPU but you won't notice the difference.

[slacker]

Consider updating your motherboard BIOS. This might give a minor boost to the system. Run spyware removal programs, defrag, and perhaps kill some of the programs that is automatically loading up on startup. You can run the msconfig tool in the run menu to prevent some of these programs from starting up. I find that when my computer that holds most of my music files is running slow, its usually infested with spyware or programs that start up automatically. I run spyware removal programs, uninstall unnecessary programs, prevent some program from automatically starting up, and finally defragging. It runs pretty well after that.  You might want to make your swap file (the place that windows reserve for virtual memory) a constant 1GB so that Windows doesn't expand it too high and then when it decides to reduce the size, bring your system to its knees. You can find this area in the advance tab of the system properties menu. Click on the settings button for the performance. Look for the virtual memory settings area and make a custom size and set the initial and maximum size to 1GB.  I do this for all of my systems and it seems to keep my system from getting periodic slow downs.

If you got the cash, get a faster SATA drive and make it your primary drive for running applications and use your current drive for data storage. Also, getting your system RAM to 1GB makes a world of a difference. Beyond that, its overkill.

[bustin98]

If you download alot of music and the computer is slowing recently, its got to be because of spyware/adware or viruses. Having a bunch of storage should have no bearing on your performance.

Even if you go to 'Start - All Programs - Startup' that will list some items that can be deleted to improve performance. It won't remove the programs, just takes them out of the Startup folder.

Then you could go into the Registry editor, though using a program like 'Hijackthis' will do the job without worrying about messing up other entries in your registry.

If you use any spyware removal tools, use them in safe mode. A program cannot be removed if it is in use.

Adding RAM will help performance, though unless it is significant you may not notice a bunch. Upgrading the MoBo BIOS may help, but most of the time a manufacturer will recommend it only if you are having a specific issue that the upgrade addresses.

Don't worry about a SATA HDD unless you have the connector on your MoBo already. Otherwise you will need a PCI adapter then the PCI Bus becomes the bottleneck in you bandwidth instead of the IDE Bus.

[Ceric]

Ad-Aware, Spybot, PerfectDisk Trial and do a full defragmentation w/smart placement with PerfectDisk after updating and running ad-aware and spybot, remember to also run the immunization in Spybot and I think all of these are at download.com.  Go into the advanced version of Spybot and use the startup tool to help determine what you don't need to have start with you computer and disable it.  After all that you might want to go to Start->Control Panel->System->Advanced->Performance(Hit Setting button).  Switch the option to "Adjust for Best Performance" (Until Vista is out Windows still uses the CPU to do most of you rendering on the desktop and like).  Then go into the Advanced tab there and hit the bottom Change button.  Change it so that Windows does not dynamically make a pagefile.  I personally set it to 1024 on whichever drive isn't my main drive because in theory my main drive will be hit the most.Set the Min and Max to the same so it never has to go through resizing it.  That should give you some speed increase.

[rossi46]

The simplest, cheapest and easiest way to speed-up your PC is to apply the Six-Month Rule. That is: get rid of EVERY app, game and software component that you haven't used for six months. Generally, if you've not used anything in that time - you're not going to. Then run the spyware, anti-virus and de-frag apps. Google for freeware PC optimising apps and run those. Go to http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php to download the best optimising/cleaning/speed-up  freeware in the world (IMO).

*note to mods - this is safe, free and legal. I use it all the time.*

Click on PC Wizard 2006 in the top left of the web page to d/l the latest version.